To document my readings and to share quotes/insights from those readings. Enjoy :D

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The Rich Employee by James Altucher (Part 2)

How a Poor Employee Thinks. Jobs can be either outsourced to other countries or be replaced. Education might not protect you from it. Do not look for employers who will outsource people at the first opportunity. Use time to learn to be innovative. Learning from online courses is a great idea. Avoid the poor employee mindset. A poor employee gossips, under promises, doesn’t understand company vision. He never invests in himself. He spends on showing off instead of learning new things. He never comes up with great ideas. Does only what is required to get a salary. He surfs the net a lot for personal interests. He hates the job.

How to Become a Rich Employee. This is a practice.

The Rich Employee Miracle Morning. You are the alchemist of your life. A near death experience can change you. Do not fight with any bad things that might have befallen you. Adopt the daily practice of choosing yourself: striving to improve every day 1% for both your physical and mental health. Some of the miracle morning strategies you can adapt are ‘Meditation’; ‘Prayer’; and ‘Breathing’. Use affirmations to help you every morning. For instance ‘Today, I am open to learn new things’. ‘V’ is for visualization. Learn to visualize your goal. ‘E’ is for exercise. ‘R’ is for reading. Read books that contain positive ideas. ‘S’ is for scribing. It is very important to have a healthy routine. Start to take action and develop positive habits.

How a Rich Employee Creates His or Her Side Hustle. What worked in the past might not work well today. Hence, it is better to cultivate the rich employee mindset. Being an entrepreneur is about mitigating and not creating risk. Find a system for developing a side job. Pay attention to your emotions. How do you make a blog more successful? You love more. Learn to spread the love and share others’ posts. Link others to your page. Have guest bloggers. Learn to make more love. Buy low, sell high. Use drop shipping tactics, like buy from AliExpress and then sell on Ebay for instance. Adopt the QVC-A method for success. Q is for Quality, V is for value, C is for consistency, A is for authenticity. Learning to find happiness with less is true wealth. We are the sum of our experiences and not the sum of our belongings. It is okay to do nothing at all on some days.

How Does a Rich Employee Handle When Others Get Jealous and Trash Her or Him? You gain success and others will start hating you. People will be jealous of your success. It is not possible to be loved all the time. I have learnt to deal with death threats and hate mails. Learn to live life like it’s your last day. It might be the last moment you see your loved ones. Hate will eventually pass after a while too. Those haters are just junk status binging. Just say ‘thank you’ and let go. Learn to have a vision. Write and work from the heart. Laughter cures all and makes people relax. Laughter is indeed the best medicine. Do not waste time living other people’s fears.

Habits of the Mentally Strong Rich Employee. Anyone can learn to mentally strong. Mentally strong people have very strong relationships. ‘You are the average of the 5 people you spend your time with’. Honesty is important. Understand it’s not about me, it’s about you. Focus on solving the problems of other people. Don’t keep thinking about making money. Smart people keep reading and become stronger. Some of the good books to read are ‘As a Man Thinketh’. Every mentally strong person was a voracious reader. Health is wealth and you can’t achieve big things in life when you are sick. Sleep 8 hours a day and walk a lot. Be curious and try to learn more things in life. Ask questions and learn and do not be shy. Learn, say, repeat. Exercise your idea muscles and come up with ideas. Learn to exercise the idea muscle and keep learning. Mentally strong people give themselves permission. Give yourself permission to fail and to try again. Ask ‘what can you do to help others?’ Understand that life changes fast. There is no grand purpose for you out there. Also understand that experiences are more valuable than goods. Learn to listen more. Pretend everything is going to die tomorrow and treat others well and with compassion. News is completely unimportant. Art and innovation are main stayers. Always take the job that gives you as much freedom as possible.

When you buy something nice, the neurochemicals spike, and then go away. When you have an experience, you have days of anticipation for the experience. Then you have the experience. Then you have the memories that can last forever. – James Altucher

Habits of the Poor Employee. The poor employee has an opinion. The poor employee thinks they are special. We do not have a special purpose in life. The poor employee talks a lot. Try to talk less when you know nothing much. The poor employee has no career. The poor employee thinks it needs X to get Y. There are many other paths to get Y. Some people think that ‘If I don’t do this then bad things will happen’. The poor employee thinks that he can’t leave. There will always be haters. You can’t change them, so you can just delete them. You are the coach of your future self. Take a walk when you feel like shit. Spend time with those who are good around you.

Get good at three, four, or five things. Then find the intersection. Then become the best in the world at the intersection. That’s how you can pretend to do your special purpose. – James Altucher

How the Rich Employee Learns

A Rich Employee is Always Learning. How do you know what you are talented at? Everyone is talented in many things. There are 10 step technique for learning. The first is to love it. Write every day. Study every chess game and work hard. Quantity of ideas is more important than quality at the start. Get a teacher. That will make you learn 10 times faster. Study the history and study the present. Do not read so many self-help business books. Write down the things you learn from each book. Do easy projects first. This will be the small wins which you give you enough confidence to continue. Study what you did. Analyze and do a post-mortem for any failures you might have suffered in the past. No man is an island and we work better in teams. Find your evil plan. Change the world.

Don’t forget the important rule: the secret of happiness is not “being great” – the secret of “growth”. If you only “try”, you’ll get to a level that is natural for you. – James Altucher

Frequently and Important Questions Rich Employees Have

How Does a Rich Employee Deal with a Crappy Boss While In Transition. When a boss yelled at me once, I quit. However, that is not the best way to deal with things. One should learn to deal with them and train them. The first tip is never kiss ass. Engage as little as possible with him, only talk about work. Never talk badly behind his back. Always give him/her credit for everything as Dogs like to be loved. Write a cover-your-ass memo every day describing what you are up to and who you are dealing with. Keep track of every detail. Build relationships with his network of colleagues and contacts. Help other employees of your boss with their jobs. Learn to over deliver. Understand what’s your market value and apply for jobs.

If your boss is a crappy person then you want to engage as little as possible. Only work stuff. Never joking around. Never anything that builds a meaningful dialogue that he will twist later. Don’t make friends with an animal. – James Altucher

On anything he asks you to do provide an extra touch. That is how he gets promoted. When you are more creative than him, over deliver for him, and he gets full credit. – James Altucher

Why is it especially important for women rich employees to become idea machines? Women need to bring things to the table too. This is because women still get paid less than men. As women, you should ask more questions. Men tend to ask the questions during talks. Men do things even if they are not 100% prepared. The transformation might be slow but slow and steady wins the race. Get out of depression. Remember to give to ourselves. Remember that ideas help to save lives and relationships etc. Learn to debunk stereotypes of women. Come up with 10 ideas a day. Ask yourself what is your passion for today? Learn to cut ourselves some slack. Understand that there is no beauty in playing small. The author recommends that ladies read ‘Lean in’.

Just One Thing to Do. Are women afraid that they will ask dumb questions? Do not be afraid anymore.

How Does a Rich Employee Master New Skills? Most of us will not be masters at anything. Talent is indeed a factor. How do you find what you are talented at? The first method is to write down what you enjoyed doing as a kid. Another way is to go to a shop and see what books you pick up to read. We are after all a combination of all of our experiences and if it is garbage so be it. Work on it four hours a day. You will also need to study history rather deeply. Study those who had failed before you. Study your failures. Do not blame others if you fail. Always learn from your experiences. Be able to recognize patterns. To become a master, one has to endure much pain. With mastery, big failures will always come. Build your ego. Persistence creates luck.

There’s a myth that everyone is talented at least one thing and you just have to find it. This isn’t true. Most people are not talented at anything. Most people can be pretty good at something. – James Altucher

At some point you have to cook 10,000 meals. Or play a million hands of poker, or 1000s of games of chess. Or start 20 businesses. Very few are successful right away. That would require too much luck and luck favors the prepared and the persistent. – James Altucher

One reason most people in the world don’t get really good at anything is because they have no talent for anything that anyone cares about. Another reason is they don’t want to put in the work. – James Altucher

How Does a Rich Employee Transform Anger into ‘What Works’? When you experience paranoia, you start losing intelligence. It will destroy you. Resentment is very bad too. If you think of revenge, that is very bad too. So does feelings of regret. Perfectionism is bad too. You can’t control the fact that you are not perfect. There are always things outside your control and you simply care too much. Feelings of guilt are not desirable too. Thinking of worst case scenarios are not desirable too. Talking unnecessarily also removes confidence.

Is there a ‘right way’ to ask for things that the rich employee utilizes? Do not be ashamed when you have to ask for something. The passive aggressive ask. By keeping silent, it will ruin your life. By asking, sometimes it can hurt your chances in future. If you can handle a lot of Nos, then keep asking. This is known as the cold ask. It doesn’t hurt if you don’t really care about the person and also what they of you. You are asking for something very small. You can ask people out for coffee. I asked 100 people to give me $5 on the street, only 1 guy gave me $1. Begging might work. Learn the ‘no pressure’ ask. Asking is good if whether they say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ doesn’t affect the relationship. Later on, you can follow up with No Pressure Asks. One good way is to ask for advice. Ask for advice on how you can improve at work or in your personal life. Try the reciprocity ask. Therefore, the trick is to give something first. You don’t have to ask immediately, you can store up your asks. What to have to offer in return? Therefore, sometimes you need to do the background work first.

As a Rich Employee, how do I know if I should take up a job in a start-up? If the CEO has built a business before, the odds of failure go down to 25%. The company must have enough funds to last 1 year at least. You must also believe in the company’s vision and the CEO must be good at communicating that vision. If you use the product and you like it, even better. Don’t work for a company that is easily replaceable at a lower valuation. Learning is the key. Look out for the subtleties of the company. If you hear about the company trashing their clients, you will probably not want to work for them. All gossiping is bad. You have to like your boss. Work for promising companies utilizing new technologies. Do not ask for when the company will IPO, because it can take up to 7 or 10 years. Make sure you see the path to profitability.

Resources for the Rich Employee

Create a Choose Yourself Meet-up in Your Town. Improving yourself is a practise and not a goal. Associate yourself with others who strive for self-improvement too. Associate yourself with people with similar goals. Share with others how to keep learning, network etc. How to Run a Choose Yourself Meet-up. Keep the meetup small. Gossip should be kept out of the way. This is like a self-help group.

Recommended Books: ‘The End of Jobs: Money, Meaning and Freedom Without the 9 to 5’ by Taylor Pearson; ‘The Miracle Morning: The Not-so-obvious secret guaranteed to transform your life (before 8am)’ by Hal Elrod; ‘Become an Idea Machine. Because Ideas are the Currency of the 21st Century’ by Claudia Azula Altucher; ‘Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success’ by Mathew Syed; ‘Seven Years to Seven Figures: The Fast-Track Plan to Becoming a Millionaire’ by Michael Masterson; ‘Quitter’ by Jon Acuff